The Death of Point Farming
Nemesis_17
Member Posts: 2,422 ★★★★★
It’s official, point farming in battlegrounds is now considered a bannable offense. For those who don’t know I’m getting this info from Kabam’s most recent post regarding battleground season 12 details. (I’d link the post here but I have no clue how to, however you can find it in the “News & Announcements” thread.) What is the community’s response? Hopefully it should make battlegrounds a more normal place in terms of competition for progressing accounts, but I’m wondering what the rest of the community thinks.
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Here is a screenshot of the post since I can’t figure out how to link it instead.
Is it really that different than auto fighting easy road with 7*'s for hero use and class combat events? That sound like point farming. I'm out of energy but want to get some event points... Half heartedly go into BG and play stupidly. Same difference to me.
Next they'll start scrutinizing AQ. We're mostly Paragon and thronebreakers playing map 2 & 3 because it's dirt easy, and we're done so quick we can enjoy not being in the game. Are they going to start forcing us to do harder AQ because our accounts are capable of doing higher maps?
So whatever. They'll do what they do. Design something and then they aren't happy because people are getting rewards they don't think were fully earned in their eyes... Sounds like sour grapes to me. Screw'em. Design it better. Spell out rewards better. Kinda comical when they design something that gets unintended results, and their knee jerk reaction is to punish. Yawn.
It may be comical when players do things that cause unintended results, but there's no way to design anything that can't be exploited in some manner or other. That's why we have rules. That's not a knee jerk reaction, that's the proper reaction for any game or activity. When the players of the game decide to do things that run counter to the intent of the game, first you warn them, and then if they choose to ignore that warning or think they are entitled to do whatever they want, then you enforce those rules in a manner that either convinces them to change their behavior or ejects them from the activity.
If you didn't care, you wouldn't take the time to post or try as hard as you are trying to pretend none of this is worthy of attention. Nobody types "yawn" that actually is yawning.
Edit: sorry this post is a little late, my original posts kept getting rejected for some reason.
Not every Paragon player rushes to the GC, most seasons I just do 3 games every 2 days and slowly make my way there by the end of the season or do a last minute push.
Most of the complaints about unfair match making talk about Plat 2, which is where the training wheels come off for smaller accounts. While they very well be running into some point farmers, there's also a chance they're just running into regular players.
If they really want to tackle point farming, the correct path would be to remove the incentive to do so, rather than trying to punish people for trying to make the most of the poorly designed system they put in place.
I mainly do it slowly because I don't like BGs. I don't push in the GC so it doesn't really matter when I hit it, and it's easier to finish the daily objectives in the VT since the win rate is higher (for me at least).
I mean, they still have to lose about every other match, don’t they? So some easy wins for the opponents…
Point farming messes with that system. You deliberately lose to big accounts (or small accounts only to stop you from progressing) and win against smaller accounts that should be no problem for a bigger roster. Some accounts aren't meant to progress as far in VT but get pushed into a tier they can't compete in, while others face competition stronger than intended for them at the lower level.
So it helps some, hurts others, and violates the intended structure of BG
One question though: I see Plat II being mentioned a lot in these discussions… What’s so special about Plat II (why not Plat I or Plat III)?
The impact of this means that smaller accounts have an artificially easier time until Plat II while stronger accounts have a harder time until then
Just play until you reach your ceiling, then wait for the next cycle.
In the lower tiers the matchmaking is heavily skewed to favor weak accounts. This forces high level accounts into deathmatches in silver/gold and boosts lower accounts straight through to platinum. Then when the matchmaking becomes free-for-all and you can actually face all the accounts in your current bracket things dramatically change :
- strong accounts suddenly face much easier matches (which after the hellish gauntlet that is silver/gold feels like a breath of fresh air)
- weak accounts suddenly see all other accounts in their bracket and have a much lower chance of encountering someone they can win against.
If there was no artificial strength-based matchmaking in the lower tiers then this would not really happen. If you want to have different leagues of BG where players up to a certain hero rating compete against each other then by all means introduce them. But if 2 players are in the same bracket and they compete for the same rewards then they should be able to face each other. What you have now makes no sense and I believe these "point farming techniques" are simply a result of that.
Punishing players without addressing the root cause is not productive and will just drive people away. Just let matchmaking be fair in all tiers and the problem will sort itself out.
Strong accounts facing players of similar strength = the hellish gauntlet that is silver/gold (and death matches)
Weak accounts facing players of similar strength = matchmaking is heavily skewed (and boosts lower accounts straight through to platinum)
In normal seasons, BG is a "competition" and only "best of the best" are meant to progress - smaller accounts should focus on progression elsewhere and let the big boys play. But as soon as the reward structure shifts people come out defending the right to game the system and farm wins against the same accounts they don't even want in BG.